Nightman

At the dead of night, I woke
with the sense that my dreams were escaping,
all uncannily unspoken
like words at the tip of a foreign tongue...

As for language, I have none
to express quite what strangeness overwhelms me:
something's changed and something tells me
to be still in the roar of the distant stars.
The night's full of fire, ice and water
by day I'll have clay in my hands.

The book is open at a well-thumbed mark
the odds are stacked that I'm facing.
Eyes grown accustomed to light and dark
can't catch the shadows they're chasing.
Open, my heart, to the vital spark -
a disordered rhythm is racing,
it's a dance macabre I'm tracing.

As the fire feeds the flame,
as the tongue finds expression in its flickering,
does each breath inform a name
to be dispersed just a soon as it's exhaled?

Was it to myself I came
or to some other strange and parallel existence?
Will I ever see tomorrow,
to wake and begin it again?

Open, the book at a well-read page,
hope triumphs over expectation
open, the secrets of seer and sage
in awe-inspired anticipation...

Open, my mind in the body's cage,
unchained in consecration
open, my eyes, to the wider stage
the firestorm of liberation -
the night in conflagration.

With a shiver down my spine
I come back to the place where I started
the sea of consciousness has parted
but stranded is all that I feel for sure.
As nightsight declines into darkness
by day there'll be clay in my hands.
I may feel the clay in my hands.